


Nymphs and Bacchantes

by osprey_archer



Category: Villette - Charlotte Brontë
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:42:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a costume ball, Ginevra comes to visit Lucy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nymphs and Bacchantes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zlot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zlot/gifts).



I was asleep when Ginevra knocked on my door that night. I knew it was her at once. The light insistence of her knock was distinctive, and no one else would have come to my door for anything less than a fire at that hour. “Go away, Ginevra,” I mumbled into my pillow, although I knew that even if she heard me, she would not have heeded. 

The door squeaked as she opened it, and although I knew I ought to ignore her, I lifted my head. She stood within the door as if in a picture frame, and very like a painting she looked, for she had been to a costume ball that night, and she wore a gauzy white gown, tied at the waist with a blue ribbon and clasped at the shoulders with brooches. A blue fillet bound her golden curls on top of her head, but a few had fallen free to brush her bare shoulders. A nymph, returned from a frolic in the forests. 

A nymph indeed. Her dress was not quite thick enough for modesty; in the chilly air of my room, the points of her breasts pressed against the fabric.

She came into the room, laying her candle beside my bed. I groaned and sat up, my blankets over my knees. “Why are you here, Ginevra?” I asked. 

“Because the house is asleep,” she said. “There is no one for me to talk to, and I _must_ talk to someone, even if it is only grumpy old Lucy.” 

“I was asleep too,” I told her. “And I would far rather sleep more than listen to another recitation of your triumphs. Save them to tell me over our morning coffee, Ginevra, and good night.”

But before I could fling the covers over my head, Ginevra cast herself into a chair by the window. “It was not a triumph,” she said. I scowled at her, but she did not appear to mark me. Instead she stared broodingly into her lap. “He would not dance with me,” she said. 

I do not think I had seen such a look on her face before. Had she at last fallen in love, only to be scorned as she had scorned Graham? There was some justice in it, and I did not fail to mark that: but she seemed so truly distressed that it touched me. 

“He? Who is _he_ , Ginevra?” I asked. 

“An officer,” she said. “Handsome as an angel, with hair as blonde as my own and hands almost as fine, and his legs - ! Ah, do not frown, Diogenes; he was dressed as Apollo, I could not help but see. I missed a dance because of him: I put myself in his way, but he did not take his chance, and so I had to sit at the side like a wallflower. And he took no notice of anything I said to him. _Me_! And I barely eighteen: am I losing my charms already?” 

Her heart was not injured: only her vanity. “He sounds a sensible man,” I told her. “Be sensible too, and go back to your bed so I can go back to mine.” 

“Sensible!” said Ginevra, with a toss of her head that loosed another curl. It fell into her face, and she brushed it impatiently away, standing to pace my little room. “I hate for men to be sensible about me. I much prefer them to be mad with love. Am I not beautiful enough to demand that little tribute from any man I wish?” 

I did not answer, and she frowned at me. Her annoyed flush only made her lovelier. “Am I not beautiful, Lucy?” she demanded. 

“Pretty enough,” I said coolly. In truth, she looked particularly lovely in her Grecian garb and flushed face; but she did not need me to tell her what a mirror could tell her well enough. 

“ _Pretty_ ,” Ginevra said scornfully. “No; I am beautiful.” And before I could answer, she unclipped the brooches that held her dress at her shoulders. Her loose floating dress fell from her shoulders, exposing her white breasts. She untied the ribbon at her waist as well, and the dress fell at her feet, leaving her naked. 

She turned to examine herself in the dark window glass. I reached to blow out the candle, fearful that someone outside might see her. Ginevra laughed. “No, let them look,” she said. “Is it often that Villette sees a vision such as this?” 

Beautiful she was. The moonlight caressed her silhouette: slender and supple, with a slim waist and flaring hips. Then she turned to face me, so the dim light of the candle flame illuminated her lovely face, her round breasts, white skin turned golden by the candlelight. 

She saw my eyes traveling down her body, and, falsely coy as a statue of Venus, placed a slim white hand to cover her sex. Even there, her hair was gold. “Do you think my cousin Paulina Mary could be as lovely as this?” she asked. 

“Not so shameless, certainly,” I said. But though the words were crusty, my voice seemed to have sunk into my throat, and when Ginevra smiled at me, my voice fled completely. Even knowing all her faults, her vanity and selfishness - how beautiful she was! Pygmalion’s Galatea could not have been more lovely when she was made woman. 

“Come, Timon,” Ginevra said. Her hips swayed as she moved over to stand by my bed. “Tell me I am beautiful. Do you not want to touch me? Here.” And she took my unresisting hand in her own, pressing it against her stomach. 

The feeling of her smooth skin beneath my hand shocked me, I who so rarely touched anyone, and had never touched anyone like this. I drew in a breath, and Ginevra let out a laugh of triumph. 

I understood, then, why men would do anything for her, even as they knew that she was mocking them for the sake of her own vanity. Wisdom, Reason left me: I slid my hand over her skin, pressing it against her back to urge her onto the bed. She came willingly, straddling my lap, leaning back against my still-raised knees. I ran my hands down her sides. She purred like a cat, and, emboldened, I lifted my hands to cup her full breasts. She moaned. “Yes, just like that,” she said. “Stroke your thumbs over - yes, like that…” 

She pressed her own hands against my stomach. My nightgown still hung between us, but even so, the touch almost undid me. I could not think, I could not breathe: the touch promised sweet oblivion. But I did not trust such a surrender of Reason. “You do not let men touch you like this, Ginevra?” I asked. 

“I do not - not quite,” she said. I pinched her breasts lightly; and she gasped, arching her back, so that I gasped too. 

“Oh, that suits you better than disapproval, Timon,” she said. “And truly I do not - I do not take off my clothes for men. They do not need so much encouragement. _Ooooh_...Yes, like that...” 

“Ginevra, you must not make so much noise,” I admonished her. 

But it was useless to ask Ginevra to exercise self-restraint. She moaned again, louder than before, as if to tell me that I could not order her about. I pressed my hand against the nape of her neck, stroking my fingers into her hair and pushing forward so I could press her lips to mine. 

She moaned again, but the sound was lost as a hum against my lips. My nightgown had ridden up to my thighs, and Ginevra slid her hand beneath it, her palm hot against my ribs. Her tongue brushed against my lips, into my mouth, and her fingers found my sex, stroking what she had only brushed before. 

She rocked against me, and I arched toward her. Her fingers worked, a little clumsy, but I did not care. I pressed against them, yearning, when I so rarely let myself want anything; but the waves of heat had washed Reason overboard. Briefly I knew nothing in the world but that coursing sea, not mere pleasure but fierceness, joy. 

I came back to myself swiftly, lying in my narrow bed in my small room high in the pensionnat. Ginevra lay face down beside me, the candlelight tracing the sinuous curve of her body, which rose and fell with her heavy breaths. I ran my hand down the line of her spine, pressing the small of her back. She grunted with sleepy pleasure and snuggled closer to me, tugging at the blanket. 

Indeed, with one firm pull she took the blanket entirely; and the room was cold. I sat up. “Ginevra,” I said. “You cannot stay here.”

“Oh, but I am so tired,” she grumbled, peeking up at me over the blanket with eyes so sleepy, so satiated, and so blue that they must have melted the hardest heart. 

They did not melt mine. “That is why you must go to your own bed and sleep there,” I said, and tugged the blanket off her again and wrapped myself in it. “Go on, Ginevra. You know you cannot be found here like this in the morning.”

Ginevra gave a gusty sigh. She rose and arrayed herself in her draperies again. It was but the work of a minute to put on her dress, refasten her brooches, and tie her hair again in its fillet. But no more was it the sweet dishabille of a nymph: she looked lovely and wild as a bacchante. 

She gathered up her candle and studied the effect in the mirror-like window. “Am I not beautiful?” she asked me, one more time. 

And, though I knew her vanity needed no feeding, I could not help myself. “Beautiful enough,” I said. She swooped in to kiss me on the cheek; and then, vanity placated, she left, a dash of white in the dark.


End file.
